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Thucydides, Theories of International Relations, and the Future of U.S.-China
Relations: A South Korean View
Taehyun Kim
Graduate School of International Studies
Chung-Ang University
Seoul, Korea
[email protected]
Paper prepared to delivery at the 22nd World Congress of International Political
Science Association, Madrid, Spain, July 2012.
Thucydides, International Relations Theories, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations:
A South Korean View1
Taehyun Kim
(Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea)
Some boys were playing around a pond when they spotted a group of frogs hopping
and swimming about in the water. The boys began to throw rocks at the frogs and
even competed against each other as to who could hit the most frogs. Sometimes the
rocks hit the frogs so hard that they died. Finally one frog hopped upon a lily pad.
“Please stop,” he pleaded, “What may seem just fun to you is death to us.”
- The Boys and the Frogs, An Aesop Fable
I. Introduction: Scientists and Fortune-tellers
They are supposed to be scientists. Their profession, like in any other scientific field,
purports to discover general laws and develop theories that explain laws. To become
a qualified one, they are heavily trained with scientific methods like statistics, and
solemnly preached of such scientific virtues as objectivity and value-neutrality. Like
their peer scientists in other disciplines, they strive to publish in order not to perish.
With journal articles and published books, they often thrive to global eminence.
During the past two decades, an odd thing happened – they have become like
fortune-tellers, jockeying people into false hopes and/or groundless fears with hardly
falsifiable and rarely falsified predictions, or rather prophecies. They are today’s
international relations (IR) theorists. Sometimes, their predictions/prophecies were
as grandiose and philosophical as the “end of history” or the “clash of civilizations”
(Fukuyama 1992; Huntington 1996). In other times, they have not hesitated to make
bold predictions about future of world politics, with huge implications for the planet’s
inhabitants – their welfare, their safety, and their life and death.
As the Cold War abruptly ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, for an
example, IR theorists quickly noted that an unprecedented unipolar international
system had come, and then predicted that it would not last. Based on the theory of
balance power, they said the pressure of international anarchy and the fear of
uncontested power would lead to the political and military rise of new great powers,
with Germany and Japan as likely candidates (Krauthammer 1990; Layne 1993;
Waltz 1993). In the next twenty years, the prediction has not been realized. With the
U.S. primacists triumphantly heralding the “stability of unipolar world” and U.S.
hegemonic exceptionalism (Wohlforth 1999: Brooks and Wohlforth 2008), the
balance of power theorists conceded but still contended “if not today, tomorrow.” And
then they devised such noble concepts as “balance of threat,” “soft balancing,” “prebalancing,” and “leash-slipping” in order to save their predictions and their theories
1
nd
This paper is prepared for delivery at the 22 World Congress of International Political Science
Association, Madrid, Spain, July 2012. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the annual
conference of Korean Association of International Studies, Seoul, December 9-10, 2011.
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 2 / 19
from refutation (Mastanduno 1997; Waltz 2000; Pape 2005; Paul 2005; Layne 2006).
In so doing, they seem to be determined to hold out until the law of differential
growth, if not the “iron law” of balance of power, makes the prophecy proved (Layne
2009).
At the end of the Cold War, for another example, they also predicted “back to the
future,” or “instability in Europe after the Cold War” (Mearsheimer 1990). Noticing the
instability was not forthcoming there, they turned to Asia which they believed “ripe for
rivalry” (Friedberg 1993/94). With the fast and unbending economic growth of China,
they predicted the “coming conflict with America” (Bernstein and Monro 1997a,
1997b; cf., Mearsheimer 2001; 2006). With none of these predictions realized, they,
instead of admitting they erred and discarding the theory that (mis-)led them to
wrong predictions, simply wait until their predictions happen to prove right with the
passage of time, during which a myriad of factors may work out to generate the
similar result as they had predicted.
The inclination to make predictions on the future history in IR is understandable.
Unlike natural sciences or other social sciences, theorists in international relations
are deprived of usual methods to test their theories. Laboratory experiments are
simply not possible. Comparative analysis is inherently handicapped, for any spatial
– cross national or cross-society – comparison is not feasible as there is only one
international system without any contemporary and comparative referent. Temporal,
over-time comparison is the only viable way to test their theories. Many of their
theories have been developed out of comparison with the past. Luckily for them, the
world has been in flux. The forty-five years of bipolarity have given way to an
unprecedented unipolarity. They are now facing a once-in-a-life-time or even a oncein-history opportunity to observe the great transition, against which they can test
theories. All kinds of theoretical labels – balance of power theory, balance of threat
theory, hegemonic stability theory, power transition theory, democratic peace theory,
offensive structural realism, defensive structural realism, liberal institutionalism, and
so on – have been called upon to meet the test.
In so doing, however, the supposedly scientific predictions of theirs have become like
prophecies and themselves like fortune-tellers. It is the case for at least two ways.
On the one hand, the predictions are hardly falsifiable, either because they have
been stated in such an open-ended way that they can be saved from any refutation,
or because their casters are not willing to give up their paradigms or the hard core of
their research programs, or both (Vasquez 1997; Lake 2011). On the other,
predictions in social sciences are often recursive. Making predictions could make the
predictions wrong. A respected fortune-teller may save a boy from drowning in river
by predicting, or by prophesying, that he will be drowning, for the devout parents
would prevent the boy from swimming in river in the first place.
Thus, I take it problematic that IR theorists have become like fortune-tellers or
prophets uttering prophecies in the pretext of “scientific” predictions for both
theoretical and practical reasons. Theoretically, it is unhealthy and even harmful to
the development of the field. Theories or “isms” in IR today are not sophisticated
enough to generate “precise” predictions, subject and amenable to falsification. This
is not to say that today’s IR theories are so underdeveloped that it cannot make high2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 3 / 19
standard scientific predictions, which shall become possible in due course of
scientific progress. Rather, international system is too large and porous to be subject
to a general, overarching theory, which allows any precise predictions. What we call
theories is little more than a set of loosely related assumptions on the nature of
human agents, political organizations, and/or international system. Any predictions
out of such theories are necessarily loose and often open-ended. Descriptions and
measurements of their empirical counterparts are loose and often open-ended as
well. Thus, testing theories via predictions on the future has hardly become a
productive practice conducive to development of the field and enhancement of our
knowledge on the subject. Instead, it has led to a “theological disputes” among “isms”
that has become like religions (Lake 2011).
Practically, it may affect policy discourses, and thereby policies and practices of
states such that the predictions become either self-defeating or self-fulfilling. Indeed,
predictions in social sciences and on social affairs have power to become either selfdefeating or self-fulfilling, because they are dealing with human agents, who are selfreflective. IR is no exception. Lewis F. Richardson (1960) said to his critics that his
(differential equation) model of arms race “merely describes what would happen if
people do not stop to think.” But people do stop to think. In fact, that human agents
are self-reflective is now a popular proposition in IR with the advent of constructivism
(Wendt 1999). In the regard, there is little difference between scientific predictions
and superstitious prophecies. Just like a prophecy becomes self-defeating as devout
parents take the admonition serious and adjust their behavior accordingly, a scientific
prediction could be self-defeating. Analysts and practitioners in today’s financial
market are too well aware of it. If a prophecy of a looming disaster becomes selfdefeating, it would not do much practical harm but disgracing the prophet. Even the
prophet may claim certain credit for averting the disaster. If a prophecy promises a
good luck and becomes self-defeating, the prophet still has the room to save his face
by blaming improper or impious behavior of the audience.
If a prophecy becomes self-fulfilling, however, the story is different. If prophecy of a
looming disaster becomes self-fulfilling attenuating the predicted disaster, what credit
would the prophet claim? Would the prophet trade pains to many for his/her personal
gains (of self-satisfaction or public popularity)? In IR, Robert Jervis (1976) warned of
the pervasive tendency and danger of self-fulfilling prophecy in national security
policy. In international politics, there is no higher authority, or world government,
which can resolve conflict of interests among nations authoritatively and thereby
prevent violence and secure survival of the weak – the familiar logic of international
anarchy. In such a system, nations become victims of Hobbesian fear, and resort to,
not Leviathan, but self-help. Also in international politics of national security and
survival, defensive and offensive intentions yield same type of behavior, and national
leaders tend to become conservative and assume the worst. One’s behavior for no
harm to others but defending self could be evidence of his presumably “harmful”
intention. The same logic is equally true for the others, thereby leading to a spiral of
conflict – the tragedy of security dilemma.
In this paper, I attempt two things. First, I try to problematize the prevailing tendency
of making predictions on the future on two accounts – how it is harmful to the
academics and practices of international relations. On this, I will take the case of the
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 4 / 19
future of U.S.-China relations as a current example. Second, given that IR literature
have been heavily influenced by and many of realist insights drawn from Thucydides
(1954), I will recast the U.S.-China relations into the context of Thucydidean thesis,
and derive implications for the ongoing debate and future development of the
bilateral relationship, which many believe shape the future world order.
II. The Rise of China, Future of U.S.-China Relations, and South Korea
Future historians may record the year 2010 as a landmark year. People’s Republic of
China, which has recorded remarkable economic growth during the past three
decades, finally and officially became the second largest economy in the world by
surpassing Japan in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measured in official exchange
rate. In due course, it is expected to overtake the United States of America to
become the biggest in a decade or so, if it has not done so already (Subramanian
2011). And, “might” followed “money” as China confronted Japan over the disputed
islands of Senkaku/Diaoyu, Vietnam and others over the South China Sea, and
South Korea and the U.S. over North Korea’s military provocations in the same year
(cf., Lampton 2008).
What does the fast economic growth of the most populous country in the world
portend? Would it mean expanded economic opportunity for all, like cheaper
products and bigger market? Or, would it mean stronger muscles of an already
mighty and intimidating juggernaut? How would the juggernaut behave and how
would others respond to it? And what would the interaction of China’s behavior and
others’ responses culminate? These are some of the questions that people in the
street are interested in and that scholars, IR scholars in particular, have tried to
answer to.
Majority of interested people have seen the positive side of the picture, i.e., that
China’s growth expands the pie for all while its growing muscles can be harnessed
by the web of international institutions. Yet, IR scholars have seen and warned
against its negative side: growing economy means expansionism, to the detriment of
others, and will eventually lead to the clash of interests with the reigning hegemon,
the United States. Indeed, the future relations between the fast-growing China and
the reigning U.S. has been the core of public debates on and off the academic
journals, the mass media, and the street.
If prevailing views were on its positive side, it has got to be IR scholars to become a
devil’s advocate and to warn against the perils of wishful thinking and the danger of
unprepared surprise. Bernstein and Munro (1997a; 1997b) provided a timely and
early warning that there is a potential that the future world might be different from
what most people think it would be. In their words,
China’s goal of achieving paramount status in Asia conflicts with an established
American objective: preventing any single country from gaining overwhelming
power in Asia. … It seems almost indisputable that over the next decade or two
China will seek to become the dominant power on its side of the Pacific. Actual
military conflict between the United States and China, provoked, for example, by a
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 5 / 19
Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan by force or to resolve by military means its
territorial claims in the South China Sea, is always possible, particularly as
China’s military strength continues to grow (Bernstein and Munro, 1997a: 21).
With the military crisis over the Taiwan Strait in the previous year of 1996, on the
occasion of the presidential election in Taiwan, to which President Clinton dispatched
two aircraft carriers, the thesis of “China threat” was well and widely received. In four
years by 2001, Professor John J. Mearsheimer (2001) published a “canonical” book
on offensive realism, which concludes with the following prediction:
It is clear that the most dangerous scenario that the United States might face in
the early twenty-first century is one in which China becomes a potential hegemon
in Northeast Asia. … [W]e would expect China to attempt to dominate Japan and
Korea, as well as other regional actors, by building military forces that are so
powerful that those other states would not dare challenge it. … U.S. policy on
China is misguided. A wealthy China would not be a status quo power but an
aggressive state determined to achieve regional hegemony (pp. 401-402).
Mearsheimer’s book was a canonical work intended to supplement (by correcting the
hidden bias toward status quo of, hence defensive realism in) earlier canonical work
of Kenneth N. Waltz (1979). Those could be called “canonical,” as they aspire to
establish a general/universal theory of international politics, based on the
assumption of international anarchy, and supported by historical evidences, and
guide future studies in the field by established scholars and aspiring graduate
students alike.
Yet, as Hans J. Morgenthau, a grandfather of contemporary realism, had warned
(which they knowingly or unknowingly ignored for the sake of universal theory), they,
as social scientists, cannot separate themselves from the society by being an
indifferent observer, but are actively engaged in the very process of historical
development as both its products and creators (Morgenthau 1946: 142-43). As
mentioned earlier, social agents are self-reflective and predictions in social sciences
and on social affairs are recursive such that they become either self-defeating or
self-fulfilling.
Bernstein and Monro (1997a: 20) find an evidence of the sinister side of China’s
growth in a slogan that Deng Xioping is said to have said: taoguang yanghui, which
was read by them to mean “concealing our abilities and bide our time.” The Chinese
took the thesis seriously, and great pains to explain that it is “not a calculated call for
temporary moderation until China has enough material power and confidence to
promote its hidden agenda,” but simply and literally mean “keeping a low profile in
international affairs” (Wang 2011: 73). The Chinese took the thesis of “China threat”
so seriously that the leadership of Hu Jintao has promoted a new, alternative slogan,
which they hoped sounds less sinister: heping jueqi (peaceful rise), underlining the
word heping or “peace.” Mearsheimer ridiculed the new slogan by underlining jueqi
or “rise” instead of heping or “peace,” and elaborated his earlier thesis further
(Mearsheimer 2006). It in turn forced Hu to change the slogan to heping fazhan
(peaceful development).
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 6 / 19
If Hu meant it and wanted to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding because of just
“wording,” the realist prophecy of “coming conflict with China” (Bernstein and Monro
1997b) may become a self-defeating one. If, on the contrary, Deng really meant
“vengeance” on the imperialist past in due time by taoguang yanghui, the realist
prophecy may be seen to the Chinese as evidence of imperialist jealousy and
animosity, and the Chinese new slogan of “peaceful” development may mean a tactic
of taoguang yanghui to conceal their true intention – a case of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Mearsheimer, together with his close colleague Stephen Walt, visited Seoul, Korea in
early October of 2011. On an international conference organized by the Institute of
Foreign Affairs and National Security, a think-tank arm of the ROK’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs and Trade, he delivered a paper on “the Rise of China and the Fate of
South Korea” (Mearsheimer 2011). In the paper, he reiterated his offensive neorealist thesis on the rise of China and derived a lesson for South Korea: (1) a rising
China will invariably seek a regional hegemon in East Asia; (2) the U.S., the sole
regional hegemon in the contemporary world, will not tolerate a peer hegemon; (3)
Asian powers including South Korea will have no choice but to join the U.S. in its
attempt to contain China; (4) if China is able to attain the modern military capability
that the U.S. alone has, South Korea will have no choice but to abandon
containment policy and instead bandwagon on China (cf., Mearsheimer 2006).
Mearsheimer, who, like Walt, visited South Korea for the first time, was extremely
well received by South Korean hosts – a big honorarium, a meeting with Lee Myungbak, the President of South Korea, and a helicopter tour to DMZ (Walt, 2011).
Looking into the much heralded state visit to the United States and a speech at a
joint session in Congress, President Lee had an interview of the Washington Post,
which was published on October 12 (Harlan 2011). In the interview, Lee was
reported to have “called on the United States to increase its role in Asia, cooperating
with China while also serving as a balance to China’s rise.” “In response to apparent
jitters here that the statement could alienate China, … Cheong Wa Dae [President’s
Office] published the whole transcript of the interview, saying the paper misreported
Lee’s remarks” (Chosun Ilbo, 2011).
On and around the same time, protesters had been sabotaging the construction of a
naval base at the southern tip of the Jeju Island by arguing that the base could be
used by the U.S. in its hegemonic struggle with China and thereby jeopardizing
South Korea’s independence and security. In 2005, South Korean society was
deeply divided over the issue of “strategic flexibility” of U.S. Army stationed in South
Korea, that is, if the American forces stationed in Korea may be dispatched to other
locales of conflict. Those who opposed the idea argued that such a movement would
inevitably embroil South Korea into unnecessary and unwanted conflicts, with U.S.Chinese clashes over Taiwan as the most prominent example.
Foreign policy discourses in South Korea is complex. South Koreans have for long
struggled with foreign policy dilemmas including its love-hate relations with North
Korea, with security-autonomy trade-offs with the U.S., and economic ties and
historical animosities with Japan. But none of these would be bigger than the
profound fear of being a shrimp among fighting whales. Uttering hegemonic struggle
between China and the U.S. in the face of the president, in the capacity of a leading
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 7 / 19
theoretician in the field of International Relations, is like adding fuel to the fire,
intended or not. Or, it is like a fortune-teller admonishing a feeble-minded mother of
looming disaster to her beloved child in order to extract certain payment. Or, it is like
the boys throwing rocks at the frogs for fun, which means death to the frogs.
Indeed, the prevailing discourse of the inevitability of hegemonic rivalry, struggle, or
war between the rising China and the reigning U.S. itself could play its own social
roles, either by either aggravating or by attenuating one or more of elements of
conflict, or by changing balance of influences among various factors of conflict and
cooperation.
This is never meant to say that IR scholars should forgo using their expert
knowledge on international affairs and remain silent. On the contrary, it is their job to
analyze the balance and its directions among various factors in operation, upon
which policy makers rely for reference and guidance in their decisions. Indeed,
Friedberg (2005) does a wonderful job of applying various theoretical perspectives to
a myriad of facts in the U.S.-China relations and providing overall picture. What I
consider problematic is the tendency of rewarding “extremism” in the “theological
battles” among “isms” or sects in the scientific field of International Relations (Lake
2011). In his wonderfully balanced work, Friedberg (2005) asks “is conflict
inevitable?” Why does he use the word inevitable? Is there anything that is inevitable
in social affairs? Someone’s death is inevitable but it is not a social, but a natural
affair.
By asking the question, he knowingly or unknowingly may be under the influence of
the positivist epistemology of neo-realism, and have in mind the words of Thucydides:
“What made [the Peloponnesian] war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power
and the fear which this caused in Sparta” (Thucydides, 1954: 49, emphasis added.)
How many neo-realists would not be tempted to replace Athens with China and
Sparta with the U.S.?
III. Thucydides and IR Theories
Indeed, Thucydides has long and often been referred to as an earliest (realist) IR
scholar (e.g., Keohane 1986). His narratives, analyses and comments have incited
imaginations and insights of many theorists and been instrumental to the
developments of many theories: power transition theory (Organski and Kugler 1980;
Rapkin and Thompson 2003), hegemonic cycle theory (Gilpin 1983; Kennedy 1987),
and hegemonic war theory (Gilpin 1989). He has also been cited as the authority in
the realist principles of power politics. It is neo-realists who found age-old support in
Thucydides for their general claims: (1) primacy of system structure for state
behaviors; (2) search for scientific, universal laws; and (3) rationalistic approaches or
the method of rational reconstruction (Keohane 1986).
First, neo-realism or structural realism emphasizes the anarchic structure of
international system as the most profound and decisive factor in all international
politics, then focuses on the distribution of capabilities over states, or the number of
great powers (polarity) as primary explanatory variable. Change in the value of the
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 8 / 19
key variable should cause big changes in the system behavior. They find the oldest
and the most authoritative support for this claim in Thucydides who said the real or
true cause of the Peloponnesian War was in the changing balance of power.2
Second, scientific or positivist orientation of neo-realism, seeking universal theories
that are valid over time and across spaces, could also be vindicated by Thucydides.
For Thucydides, who seems to have claimed that he found “true cause” to the war in
terms of the structure of a system, also seems to have said that his finding is true
forever.3
Third, what makes IR theories or any social theory for that matter, general and
universal, hence scientific is the assumption on human nature that is valid temporally
and spatially – that human agents are rational and their decisions and actions can be
reconstructed rationally. This is where Keohane (1986: 163-65), in his reconstruction
of (neo-) realism, finds the commonality between Thucydides and Morgenthau.4
In so doing, however, Thucydides was often misused or even abused (Bagby 1994).
In his paper for South Koreans, for example, Mearsheimer said: “[Asian countries]
would therefore have little choice but to abandon containment and bandwagon with
China. This would be a bitter pill to swallow for countries like South Korea, but as
Thucydides said long ago, ‘The strong do what they want and the weak accept what
they have to accept’.” No! Thucydides did not say that; he merely recorded what the
Athenians said to the Melians (Thucydides 1954: 402). Indeed, neorealist reading of
Thucydides is extremely superficial. According to Lebow (2003: 113-18), one of the
most thorough readers of Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War could be
read and uncovered at four layers. The first and most shallow layer is the discussion
of power, fear, interests, and honor, as motives for action. Neorealist reading remains
at this level, even without exploring its fullest meaning by leaving out honor as
motive. The second layer is that the entire history could be read as a tragedy
covering the rise and fall of the Athenian empire. Tragedy was a very popular form of
art and literature in 5th century Athens with Sophocles as a popular example, and
Thucydides was a contemporary to Sophocles. The third layer is concerned with the
relationship between convention and nature, between words and deeds. On this
account, Thucydides is not a realist, let alone a neo-realist. He is a constructivist (cf.,
Garst 1989; Lebow 2001). The fourth and deepest layer is more philosophical
concerning “the rise and fall of Greek civilization, and the circumstances in which
different facets of human nature come to the fore” (Lebow 2003: 117).
Whether Thucydides is a realist or a constructivist does not concern me. My point of
argument is, first, that IR theorists’ love for theorization (through abstraction and
generalization) costs them the subtlety, delicacy, and complexity that readers can
find in Thucydides. Then, I argue that applying the theories to current affairs
including the U.S.-China relations so as to gain practical lessons is not only hopeless
2
“What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in
Sparta (I.23)” (Thucydides 1954: 49).
3
“My work … was done to last for ever (I.22)” (Thucydides 1954: 48).
4
“My method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that
were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation (I.
22)” (Thucydides 1954: 47).
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 9 / 19
but also harmful, both for theories and for practices. In the next section, I will
highlight some of the prominent factors that played roles in one of the greatest wars
in history so as to gain insights into and lessons for future courses of U.S.-China
relations.
IV. Peloponnesian War: A Short Story
Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) was the war fought between Sparta and its allies
on the one side and Athens and its allies, most of whom were in fact tribute-paying
subordinate states, on the other for 27 years. The war and its history had attracted
many readers, not just historians but also IR theorists, thanks to Thucydides, who as
a contemporary of the war provided detailed account of the war, together with his
thoughtful analysis of causes and progression of the war.
Sparta since the 6th century BC had been the hegemonic state in the Greek world.
Armed with best citizen warriors, selected at the birth, heavily trained during entire
childhood, Sparta freed many of Greek city states from tyranny and established
regimes that would serve their interests, and thereby became the hegemon. In 480479 BC, King Xerxes of Persian Empire invaded Greece with full force, and reflecting
its hegemonic status, Sparta organized allied forces of Greek states and defeated
Persia both at sea (the Battle of Salamis) and on land (the Battle of Plataea).
At the end of the war, the Athenians took over the leadership of Greek allies in the
war to pursue retreating Persians and liberate Greek states from Persia on and
around the Aegean Sea. By then, the Athenians already had the largest navy in
Hellas and had gained high reputation for their daring character and military prowess
among the Greeks. During the war of liberation that lasted for decades, the allies
became reluctant to fight and risk their lives, and preferred to contribute to the allied
cause not by army and navy, but by ships and money. They in due course became
subordinate to Athens, who with the money and ships from the allies built a navy that
no other Greek state could match. Also by constructing the Long Walls around the
city, Athens became invincible from the land as well as from the sea. Also with the
money from the allies and the wealth that their commercial activities, well protected
by the navy, brought about, Athenians prospered and built one of the most shining
civilizations in world history. Socrates, the philosopher, Herodotus, the historian,
Hippocrates, the physician, Sophocles, the tragedy writer, Phidias, the architect, and
Pericles, the politician, were the builders and the products of the civilization.
The Athenian empire kept expanding, north to Trace, east to Asia, south to Egypt,
and west to Boeotia and even Megara, thereby encroached Sparta’s sphere of
influence. In 445 BC, Athenian expansion finally stalled: they suffered a fatal defeat
in Boeotia, a revolt by the ally in Euboea, and invasion of Attica by the Peloponnese
almost at the same time. They were forced to agree to a 30 years peace treaty with
Sparta. In the treaty, the two sides agreed not to take any ally from the other’s
league of allies. Balance of power between two opposing leagues, the
Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and the Delian League led by Athens, was
both delicate and fragile. The balance could have been broken by defection by a
single ally either because of their own dissatisfaction with the status quo, either
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 10 / 19
internal or external, or treachery by one of the great powers.
In 435 BC, Epidamnus, a small city state in a remote barbarian land established by
Corcyra, which was in turn created by Corinth, experienced internal turmoil.
Democratic Party, which had become popular in most Greek cities due to Athenian
success with democracy, forcefully took power from the ruling aristocratic party, who
in exile allied with neighboring barbarians and attacked the ruling party. The ruling
democratic party appealed to its mother city, Corcyra, for help but achieved nothing.
They then turned to its grand-mother city, Corinth for help, who accepted the
invitation with great enthusiasm. Their enthusiasm had to do as much with their
hatred of Corcyraeans, who for long had refused to respect their mother city of
Corinth, as with the opportunity for territorial expansion.
So the two states went into a war. At the initial stage of the war, Corcyra stood fairly
well against the traditional great power of Corinth. Their navy, which they boasted to
be the second only to Athens in Hellas, defeated Corinthian navy. Yet, when Corinth,
a traditional great power, mobilized its own resources and allies, and swore
vengeance, they had to look for outside assistance. Although Corcyra allied with
none of Athens and Sparta, they decided to ask for help from Athens, given that
Corinth was an ally of Sparta. Their offer of the second strongest navy in Hellas to
Athens, and their implicit threat of the same navy falling into the hands of the enemy
made the Athenians both tempted and fearful. With growing apprehension that war
with Sparta was certain to come, the Athenians swallowed the bait and took side with
Corcyra.
So did the Athenians intervene in the war between Corcyra and Corinth. Although
they just came short of full naval engagement with Corinth, the ensuing hostility
between the Athenians and the Corinthians were hardly curable. Then, as a measure
of precaution, the Athenians sieged Potidaea, a colony of Corinth but an ally of
Athens, for the fear of revolt, which in time became reality. Athens also prohibited
Megara, a Spartan ally located near Athens, from using any port of Athenian empire
and Athenian market for commercial activity, the first economic sanction in the
history of international relations. The Corinthians and Megarians appealed to Sparta
for war of vengeance, which Sparta accepted – so the war erupted.
The first two or three years of war were waged in the way that the ancient Chinese
Sun Tzu had prescribed – winning without battle. While the Spartans laid waste to
Attica, outside of the Walls, the Athenians sent to their fleet around the Peloponnese
to lay waste to Spartan land – a war of attribution avoiding direct fighting and hoping
the enemy to come to terms. But due to the logic of escalation and unforeseen
events during the course of war, the war got intensified and uglier. In the seventh
year of the war, 425 BC, the Athenians recorded a landmark victory – in the island of
Sphacteria near Pylos, the Athenians engaged the first ever land battle with the best
of Spartan warriors, and defeated them. They killed hundreds of them and took more
as prisoners. That put the warring parties into peace – a temporary and but “false
peace” in 421 BC (Kagan 2003).
There was a five-year period of neither war nor peace before the Athenians ventured
them into a fateful, eventually ill-fated, expedition to the island of Sicily. Domestic
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 11 / 19
political turmoil, luck and accidents, or the god’s will, and eventually Spartan
intervention led to decisive Athenian defeat. The rest of the history was already
written. Athens experienced internal political upheavals, and successive defeats,
until they finally surrendered to the Spartans, who at last destroyed the Long Walls
and ended the Athenian empire in 404 BC.
V. Rereading the History
As I alluded before, simplification of history in favor of theory is problematic and
history needs to be read again and again in order not to lose its nuanced details and
take lessons.
1. A Preventive War by the Defending Hegemon in Decline?
The most powerful statement in the entire book is that “what made war inevitable
was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta,” and
that the Spartans voted in favor of war “because they were afraid of the further
growth of Athenian power” (Thucydides 1954: 49, 97). The question is if the fear of
the Spartans for the growth of Athenian power was strong enough to make the war
inevitable, and if the war was a “preventive” war initiated by the Spartans to forestall
further growth of Athenian power.
The first point was contested by Donald Kagan (1969) who noted that the height of
Athenian power was not when the war actually broke out in and around 431 BC, but
a couple of decades before when the Athenians conquered and subdued most of
Boeotia and the isthmus where Megara and Corinth were located. After that,
Athenian power was in steady decline with the defeat in Boeotia, revolt in Euboea,
and failure in Egypt, all of which led the Athenians to accept the thirty year peace
treaty with the Spartans in 445 BC. For ten years after that until the Corcyraean
crisis, there was no significant activity on the part of Athenians to increase its power
much further.
Second, it was not “fear” but “honor” that led the Spartans to declare war on Athens
(Lebow 2003: 101-03). Archidamus, the king, alone properly appreciated the power
of Athens, but instead of arguing for a preventive war in order to forestall its further
growth, he argued for time and patience to get properly prepared for the war. Other
Spartans were simply offended by Corinthian charge of timidity and Athenian
arrogance. Honor and anger were the emotions, not fear, which caused the Spartans
to declare war.
Third, it was true that the war started with Peloponnesian invasion of Attica in 431
BC so as to make the war called “Peloponnesian War.”5 But it was not an outright
invasion or all-out attack out of blue. There had been ample exchanges of diplomatic
activities on the both parts, with at least three attempts on Spartan initiative to settle
the issue diplomatically. In the allied congress at Sparta, where Corinth and other
5
Later in the war, after Nicias’s Peace in 421BC, Thucydides called the war “Attica War”
(Thucydides 1954: 363).
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 12 / 19
allies sued for war, and even the Athenians were given opportunity to defend their
causes, Athenian speech was more provocative than appeasing.
2. Athenian Challenge out of Dissatisfaction with the Status Quo?
The Athenians have long been frustrated with the lack of prestige that lagged behind
their power, which they thought to have had. Even during the Persian War of 480 BC,
the Athenians were upset that the commander-in-chief for the naval operation, where
the Athenians provided most of the ships, was a Spartan. In 469 BC, when the
Spartans were struggling with the worst uprising by the Helots, the Spartans invited
the Athenians for help in siege operation, for which the Athenians were famous.
Upon their arrival, the Athenians heard from the Spartans that they would have to go
back, simply because they were not needed any more. It upset the Athenians so
badly that they ostracized Cimon, their war hero and a pro-Spartan general, into
exile.
Despite their contributions to the common Greek causes against Persians, their
daring character and military prowess, and their wealth, the Athenians had been
frustrated with the general lack of respect, which they thought they deserved. In 448447 BC, Pericles initiated an innovative diplomatic venture. He proposed a panGreek international conference in Athens at Athenian expenses to restore lost
temples and to fulfill the oath they made during the Persian War. He selected twenty
well-respected Athenian citizens for envoys and dispatched them to the entire Greek
world. On the conference day, no city sent their representatives because of Spartan
interruption. Pericles and the Athenians were deeply hurt (Plutarch 1990: 184-85).
They might have been determined since then that they needed to display military
power in order to gain due respect.
3. Second-tier Great Powers and the Role of Instigators
It was more with the Corinthians than with the Spartans that the Athenian interests
collide with the most. It was probably because Corinth had long been prosperous
and established the sphere of influence – Corcyra was its colony and so was
Potidaea, which provided first cases for complaints. It was Corinth who called up the
allied conference in Sparta and challenged the Spartans for their reluctance to fight
wars. It was also the case that Corinth was not just an ally of Sparta over which the
Spartans possessed full control. Corinthian power was too strong or important for the
Spartans to ignore and to lose to Argos, a rival state in the Peloponnese. 6 Or, its
geostrategic location was simply too important for the Spartans to let it fall into the
hands of Athenians. And by taking full advantage of such strategic and geographic
positions, the Corinthians exploited Spartan power in order to defend or expand their
interests.
4. Minor Powers
6
In their speech to the allied conference at Sparta, Corinthians threatens possible defection from
the alliance with Sparta: “Do not force the rest of us in despair to join a different alliance (I.71)”
(Thucydides 1954: 77).
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 13 / 19
The war, or the possibility thereof, between Sparta and Athens, destabilized the
entire Greek international system. There were three types of local conflicts, which
were precipitated by and in turn exacerbated the hegemonic conflict between two
great powers. The first was civil wars. By the time, in most or all of Greek states,
internal political struggles were in full swing. People were divided into two political
parties – the one for oligarchy by a few aristocrats and the one for democracy by the
masses. Without the feud between Sparta and Athens for potential patron, those
internal power struggles could have been resolved with little bloodshed. But as
vividly described by Thucydides with the Corcyraean example (Thucydides 1954:
236-45), internal political rivalries went into fierce armed struggle with possible or
actual intervention by the competing great powers, and/or the expectations of such
intervention on the part of the locale.
The second was interstate wars among old rivals in Hellas or even among foreigners.
The Thebans annihilated the Plataeans in their neighborhood; the Acarnanians
fought the Ambraciots, all because of possible and actual intervention by the great
powers.
The third was revolt by allies, or subordinate states in the Athenian empire.
Expecting that the Athenians would not be able to come in full force due to the
ongoing war with Sparta, and that the Spartans would come into help either directly
or indirectly by attacking the Athenians elsewhere, the Mytilenians revolted from
Athens, which in the end caused the loss of their state.
In the hegemonic struggle between the great powers, the anticipations of help that
instigated local conflicts were not out of ground. The great powers indeed did
intervene in most of those conflicts in order to defend or to expand their power,
where the distinction between defending and expanding was often blurred. Thereby,
nearly all the states in Hellas either voluntarily or involuntarily took side with either
side; war got extended and intensified, casting bloodshed everywhere, creating and
deepening hostilities and animosities.
5. Hubris and the Causes of Athenian Imperialism
One of the things that attracted my attention most was the cause of Athenian
imperialism, and in due course, the “Athenian thesis” of power politics. The rise and
fall of, hence the tragedy of Athenian empire was directly related to this. While many
factors including the commercial and naval activities by and daring characters of the
Athenians are listed, the most fundamental cause I think is the hubris that the
Athenians suffer from collectively. Hubris is a Greek word referring to arrogance of
the successful and powerful. It makes people to feel that they deserve the good
fortune they enjoy (nothing to be grateful to luck or god); that their success is the
result of their (extraordinary) capabilities and will continue as long as they maintain
the capabilities; that they are special compared to other people in terms of their
capabilities and privileges they enjoy.
In their assessment of the war with the Spartans, and on the expedition to Sicily,
Athenians suffered from hubris collectively. Athenian hubris had multiple sources:
domestic democracy, which gave the people to elect politicians and ostracize the
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 14 / 19
most powerful; their privileged position vis-à-vis other people within their empire; and
their early success in the war in terms of the victory in Pylos. These are combined to
lead the Athenians to dangerous and ill-fated expedition to Sicily. The tragedy of the
rise and fall of Athenian empire, in my reading, is rooted in the psychology of hubris.
It is interesting that the Athenians themselves recognized the danger of hubris as
expressed in Cleon’s speech on the Mytilenian debates: “when great prosperity
comes suddenly and unexpectedly to a state, it usually breeds arrogance (III.39)”
(Thucydides 1954: 215). But with the death of Pericles due to plague, political
leaders in Athens, instead of leading the mass, became “demagogues” or populist,
and led by the mass and the collective hubris into reckless policies (pp. 163-64).
6. Accidents and Fortunes
In social affairs, things are hardly preordained and accidents and fortunes play great
roles in the course of history. Both Athenians and Spartans were well aware that, as
evident in numerous speeches. But throughout the history, nothing was so accidental
than the plague, which erupted in the second year of the war, killing a third of entire
population and, most of all, its brilliant leader who designed the war from the first
place, Pericles. In emphasizing the role of accidents and fortunes, Thucydides can
hardly be regarded as a neorealist or a structural realist.
7. Thucydides and the Complex Realism
According to Doyle (1997), portraying Thucydides as a structural realist is misleading.
Rather he should be regarded as a complex realist who puts equal and significant
weights to system-level, state-level, and individual-level variables in explaining
interstate politics. It is not, however, the multiplicity of the variables, but the
interactive effects of those variables at different levels that which made Thucydides’
realism a complex one.
Indeed, the biggest lesson I take from the Thucydides’ history is the complexity of
social world and history. Complexity was the keyword in another “canonical” book
written by Keohane and Nye (1977). With the advent of complexity theory, it gained
wider publicity both in the U.S. (Jervis 1997) and in South Korea (Ha 2011). In his
book on soft power, Nye (2004: 4) envisioned a world with three dimensional chess
board: military, economic, and socio-cultural. Ha (2011) provides a bit more
sophisticated vision of world politics in terms of the four-pillared Dabo tower model of
world politics. In his vision, four pillars represent security, prosperity, culture, ecology
issues that are engrained on the base of knowledge and controlled by politics.
Having been interested in security affairs, I see a world that is somewhat unbalanced
among those areas, with more weight on security issues, particularly in East Asia,
just as Mearsheimer sees it.
In security issues alone, however, Thucydides portrays a dynamics that is more
complex than a neorealist might see it. The Peloponnesian War was not just a
bilateral war between two hegemonic powers, but a system-wide war where other
powers, second-tiered or even minor, played significant roles in the outbreak and
process of the war. The complex picture I read in the History looks like this.
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 15 / 19
First, there are horizontal moves and interactions between great powers in terms of
balance of power and emotions (of love and hate, fear and honor). Second, there is
downward vertical causal effect of the great power politics upon local politics.
Sensing and counting on changes in the great power politics, politics in the locales
becomes flamboyant. Third, there is upward vertical causal effect of local politics
upon the great power politics. Great powers become sensitive to the outcome of
local conflicts and their impact upon the bilateral relations and balance of power, and
inclined to intervene so as to manage and change such impact.
VI. Conclusion:
Implications for the Future of U.S.-China Relations and East Asian Security
In thinking of the future of U.S.-China relations, people, laymen and experts alike,
tend to approach it from the vantage point of view of structural realism: rivalry and
conflict between top two powers are inevitable and the relationship between a
stagnant reigning hegemon and a fast growing challenger is the most unstable.
While such a tendency seems to have been influenced by (a casual reading of)
Thucydides, a careful reading of Thucydides’ History reveals that social affairs and
human history progress refutes such a deterministic view.
First, nothing in the bilateral relations between the reigning hegemon (the U.S.) and
the rising power (China) is preordained toward conflict. There are two reasons for
this: first, it is far from certain where the balance among various factors at various
levels – security, economy, culture, and environment – is heading to; and second,
even if there is disproportionate weight in favor of security issues, it is still far from
certain that the U.S. and China are heading into confrontation. For, social affairs are
far more complex than most of theories in social sciences presuppose. This is all the
truer in International Relations.
Analogy from historical examples is misleading analytically – e, g,, the analogy from
the Peloponnesian War to the Cold War, and to future U.S.-China conflict – in terms
of the multiplicity of the causal factors and the complexity among them. Analogy from
historical examples is misleading practically in that it could lead to either selfdefeating or self-fulfilling prophecies with respect to the contemporary history.
Second, minor powers in great power politics play greater roles than what neorealist
suppose. As much as the great power politics is affected by politics in the locales,
there is ample room in which local, minor powers play roles in making and changing
the history. There could be two ways in which local powers affect the great power
politics and systemic outcomes. The first is active ones. That is, minor powers, if
they are given chances, may try to instigate open conflicts between great powers, as
Corinth did. They may do so in their attempts to maximize their interests, knowing or
not knowing the full consequences of their own actions. And even the greatest power
can hardly have complete control over their actions. The second is passive ones.
Minor powers simply purse courses of action that the circumstances may seem to
compel them with no intention to affect great powers politics. In the myriad of factors
that great powers may take into consideration, such behavior of local, minor powers
may affect the decision calculus of great powers, which determine their respective
2012 IPSA World Congress – by Taehyun Kim – Page 16 / 19
behavior and the international outcome in turn.
Third, there is a complex interaction between the system-level variables and the
state-level variables. As alluded already, great powers at the system level make
decisions as much with consideration of other powers’ behavior as other, minor
powers do with their consideration of great power relations.
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